Born-Late Rocketeer Tells All

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The dried contact cement is… improved. Might never be beautiful. These days if I can remember to I prefer to glue launch lugs on before fins, so I did that. Much easier to line it up without fins in the way, especially these fins. These unshaped fins. The instructions specifically tell you not to shape…

Start with the motor mount which, by volume at least, is nearly the entire rocket. The motor hook goes on the outside of the body tube, and then the Tyvek piece gets glued over that. (It was gauze in the original K-15.) I tried using yellow glue for that, but the Tyvek didn’t seem very…

For its winter project, the Syracuse Rocket Club is making Sprites. This isn’t a group build of a single rocket but individual builds of a single design: the K-15 Estes Sprite, or Astron Sprite as it was first known when introduced in 1964. Looks like its first catalog appearance was 1966. I suppose if any…

I’ve been dealing with a couple more giveaway rockets. I don’t know their history. Looks like both are based on failed rockets, but there are things I can only guess at. First rocket: There’s a piece of body tube, painted and with a sticker on it, with launch lug, engine block, and nose cone glued…

Temperature in the mid 70s, clear skies, almost no wind… you sure this is October? I was pushing the button much of the day but snuck in a few rockets of my own, and abdicated close to the end of the launch to prep a couple rockets that needed more time. First of mine was…

If you’re looking for trouble, you might find it in a dollar store. I dragged a piece of ST-7 tube out of the stash. Cut off three pieces, punched a hole in each of two and two in the third. I also had a couple of 18 mm balsa blocks about an inch long in…

Yesterday’s weather was just about perfect for flying rockets. Could’ve been five degrees cooler but that’s about it. I was the launch director, though, so I did a lot of pushing the button for other people’s rockets. I brought only one rocket of my own, and launched it early — actually it was the first…

I finished putting the Blue Bird Zero together. I’ve forgotten, have I ever used the alternate top piece of the fin alignment tool? The one for narrower tubes? Maybe this was a first. The spirals were pretty tight, so I decided to leave them for the filler primer to deal with, but I did fill the…

Look, in my defense, I tested the Testors laquer over the Duplicolor primer. And I tested the Rustoleum 2X black enamel over the Testors laquer over the Duplicolor primer. The one thing I didn’t test was the Krylon clear coat over the Rustoleum 2X black enamel over the Testors laquer over the Duplicolor primer.I’d sand that…

Hey, did you know Testors lacquer dissolves plastic disposable cups?Me neither. By pure blind luck it wasn’t over anything important when the bottom let go. Anyway, I put the stuffer tube in. There’s no rear centering ring; the tube’s held in place with internal fillets on the fin tabs. Then I brush painted a bit of…

I gave the nose cone an Elmer’s treatment, then primed and started sanding. Discovered a problem. The sides weren’t as flat as I thought. This side had an especially low spot in the center, but really all the sides were higher on the edges. I did a lot of sanding to get the sides flat (or…

This is the last of the kits I bought at NARCON last year to be started. I’ve always liked the Blue Bird Zero’s looks and decided, standing there in eRockets, I should have one. I’ve since thought of a couple possible kitbash ideas, so maybe I should have several, but I don’t and I’ll build…

It’s been announced that next Memorial Day Weekend, instead of their usual NYPower event, the Monroe Astronautical Rocket Society (MARS) will be hosting the NAR’s National Sport Launch in Geneseo, NY at the site of the National Warplane Museum. Well, add that to my list of future events I’ll need to go to Monroe County for! (Also…

These are two of three rockets I won in yesterday’s raffle… actually they’re two of three I traded with Mark Riffle for the one I won, which he promptly gave to a couple kids who’d been lusting after it. I did the minimal assembly work required — tying the chute and shock cord to the…

I wanted to fly the Ventris but when I went to pack it I remembered it had been damaged the last time and I haven’t repaired it yet. So I brought the Scion instead, and flew it on a CTI 108G68 with an 8 second delay. Yet another good launch and deployment right after apogee.…